As the school bus rolled to a stop outside her Lake County home, Beth Jones adjusted the bright yellow document protruding from the pouch of her daughter's wheelchair, making sure it was clearly visible. Posted on 12/10/2007 10:11:05 AM PST by Sopater
As the school bus rolled to a stop outside her Lake County home, Beth Jones adjusted the bright yellow document protruding from the pouch of her daughter's wheelchair, making sure it was clearly visible.
In bold letters it warned, "Do Not Resuscitate."
The DNR order goes everywhere with Katie, including her 2nd-grade classroom at Laremont School in Gages Lake. The school is part of the Special Education District of Lake County, where an emotional two-year discussion ended this summer when officials agreed to honor such directives.
Now, district officials find themselves in the unusual position of having planned the steps its staff will, or won't, take to permit a child to die on school grounds. Although DNR orders are common in hospitals and nursing homes, such life-and-death drama rarely plays out in schools, where officials realize how sensitive and traumatic the situation could be for nurses, teachers and students.
Katie's brain was deprived of oxygen before birth. She can't walk, talk or do anything for herself. She is fed through a tube in her stomach and has an increased susceptibility to infection. Violent choking and coughing spasms have signaled a turn for the worse in her condition.
A Do Not Resuscitate order is a doctor's directive, issued with the consent of the family, that cardiopulmonary resuscitation will not be used if the patient suffers from heart or breathing problems. It can also prohibit using such devices as a defibrillator or an intubation tube. 
The new DNR policy puts Katie's school district at the forefront of a growing national debate about severely disabled and chronically ill children whose lives have been extended by medical advances -- and whose parents must face heart-wrenching decisions about the future.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Glad you agree. I thought I might get flamed like I did last year. Someone posted a story about two stray dogs that got stuck out on an ice flow. By the time the rescue crew got there, one had died of drowning and hypothermia and the other wasn’t in real good shape.
I suggested that it was a good training exercise, but that a sniper at 300 yards would be far more humane to the dogs.
Yup, my backside got lit up for that one.
“Why is this child in public school anyway? What about the needs of the other children?”
Indeed. It costs many multiples of what is spent on a normal or even a gifted child to give what amounts to custodial care to children like these. But schools are forced by the federal government to make these enormous expenditures in the name of “education” for children who can’t possibly learn. Some, but not all, of the extra expenses are reimbursed by the feds. But, again, these are resources being taken from the taxpayer and spent, basically, to provide very expensive day care for severely handicapped children. I’m sure it is a relief to the parents. But there is absolutely no return to the taxpayers from these “investments in education,” which is how the public education system is usually sold.
Did you read the article? The school has decided it WILL honor it, so how can you “side with the school” and also say you “wouldn’t honor it”.
Personally, I don’t think a public school has any business second-guessing ANY orders approved by both the child’s doctors and parents. But I do have a problem with public schools having children in this condition attending in the first place. I’m sure she attends with full time aide, at massive cost, and her presence is no doubt quite disruptive to the education process that is supposed to be going on.
If doctors have determined that there is no possibility that this girl will ever grow up, much less be even partially self-sufficient, then there is no benefit to having her “participate” in a school program that is designed specifically to prepare children for self-sufficient adulthood. This is political correctness gone mad. If she seems to actually enjoy going out and being with other children, she could do that in a special program designed to meet the needs of severely disabled children.
Given her disabilities, is school any more than free day care for the parents?
DNR T-Shirts need to be sent to Katie's parents for them to wear at the next shootin' match.
As well it should have been. What, are you suggesting euthanasia for this girl or something? I do not agree.
Indeed, and the cost of this sort of thing has forced many public schools to eliminate or never start programs for gifted children — you know, those unimportant smarty-pants who might actually grow up to find preventions and cures for severe disabilities IF their high abilities are developed through appropriate education.
The only reason I can think is that maybe they think she gets some pleasure out of being around other kids (just guessing).
BTW, CPR and resuscitation hurts...leaving bruises and often broken/cracked ribs. Making it even harder and more painful to breath than before. You can only resuss them only so many times.
But there is absolutely no return to the taxpayers from these “investments in education,”
I view these activities as the neoliberals' version of 'No Child Left Behind'. And which actually leave all the other students in such a class a little more behind academically.
Not in any way.
I suggested shooting the stray dogs to put them out of their misery. Keyword-Dogs.
This little girl is in a very sad situation. Her parents are the jerks who are warehousing her in a school when she’s apparently near to death.
So it is fine to force people to watch your child die without allowing them to do something?
That is just outrageous. If someone wants their kid to be “allowed” to die, perhaps in great pain, then THEY should take the moral responsibility and be there for it themself, not pawn the responsibility on others. I guess the damage it might to do other children and the teachers is meaningless.
How foul.
I see the problem as this — why is she in school? If she can’t walk, talk, or do ANYTHING for herself, school is really just a day care center. But that’s not what schools were meant to be. Why should the school provide what is really child hospice care?
The hospices are equipped to handle these tragic situations.
The child is in school because it pleases her to be there.
See bottom paragraph, page one.
Home or daycare. Public school isn’t the place. I don’t care what the government rule is, we’ve had bad law before. I’m not against “mainstreaming” in most cases where the disabled kid can learn, but according to the article it is clear she’s not capable of learning. Is common sense dead in your world?
Amen and amen.
If the rest of society is "freaked out" by seeing a disabled person, society needs to become more civilized.
As taxpayers, her parents have as much right to have their child in “free daycare” as all the parents whose normal healthy kids spend the day in public schools. But a regular public school is an expensive and inappropriate place to drop such children off for day care.
The little girl can still enjoy life.
On the other hand, she has frequent choking episodes, near death events. How many does she have to endure before she does die?
On another hand, could a tracheotomy help her, or would she need a ventilator?
The procedure, if she stops breathing, is that she will be taken to the nurse's office, she can be suctioned and given oxygen, the mother and the paramedics will be called, the paramedics will be on standby if the mother changes her mind.
The child already stopped breathing once at school but revived when a teacher picked her up.
I don't think school is the place for a child to go to die, and IMO, medical intervention would be appropriate here - the child gets pleasure out of life. Christopher Reeve had a ventilator, for instance.
OK,
then that makes sense....I can see where she would enjoy the other kids, the lights, sounds, stimulation etc....
I guess I'm the heartless one then, because I think the DNR is wholly appropriate. I'm against active euthanasia, but there comes a time when heroic measures to preserve life aren't warranted. We all die, and sometimes a natural death is kinder than artificial life. Unfortunately, we as a culture have lost sight of this.
Worse, I'm sure this really going to offend some, but I'm also of the opinion that children who cannot benefit from it do not belong in school. It's taxpayer sponsored babysitting for the parents of severely brain damaged children, and it's a huge waste of not only money the time of the staff.
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